EUROPEAN OFFICIALS COMMANDEER PRIVATE PROPERTY TO HOUSE MIGRANTS

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Faced with an orchestrated influx of millions of migrants from Africa and the Middle East,
German officials have started commandeering private property to house
the tsunami of new arrivals. Italian property owners have also been
forced, literally kicking and screaming, to house migrants against their will. Plans to put resistors in jail are reportedly being considered.
And in Sweden, where an extreme housing shortage in Stockholm has been
made even more acute by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants
in recent years, authorities are using tax money to outbid Swedes in the intensifying competition for living space. Other fundamental freedoms are also being attacked under the guise of dealing with the self-inflicted “refugee crisis.” And it is going to get worse.

Perhaps the most extreme attacks on private property have come from
Germany. In the city of Hamburg (shown), the ruling coalition of extreme
left-wing authorities first began seizing private property to house
migrants with a controversial law passed in October of 2015. With some
400 migrants arriving in the city each day and migrant shelters already
packed to capacity with new arrivals, officials claimed it was needed.
At first, it was just commercial property that was supposed to be
confiscated and turned into migrant housing, and only if the property in
question was vacant. The confiscation was also only supposed to take
place if the owner refused to hand over their properties voluntarily in
exchange for compensation funds extracted from taxpayers.

But as always occurs with government attacks on fundamental rights,
it was a slippery slope — and it did not take long for phase two to
begin.  

Now, authorities in Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, are even
targeting and commandeering residential properties as well. According to
local and international news reports this
month, authorities have now seized six apartments in the central Hamm
district, against the owner’s will. After the properties were
confiscated, officials began “renovating” them so they would be suitable
for tenants of the government’s choosing. The property owner will be
billed for all the “renovation” expenses incurred by the government, a
spokesman for the governing council behind the seizures was quoted as
saying in the press. The costs are estimated to run into five figures. A
“city-appointed trustee” will oversee the process and the housing units
commandeered by authorities.
But this is just the start, according to various news agencies. The
local government, dominated by the far-left Socialist and Green parties,
even established a “hotline” for residents of Hamburg to report any
properties they may know of which may have been vacant for more than
four months. After those four months are up, the residential properties
will be subject to being commandeered by local government and being put
under the supervision of the government’s “trustee,” who can then pack
the apartments with migrants or other tenants at taxpayer expense.
Activists reportedly also set up a website dubbed “Vacancy Reporter” to
help authorities locate vacant real estate for authorities to commandeer
in Hamburg and beyond.
Of course, multiple government policies have fueled the housing
crisis. From failing to approve building permits to imposing draconian
restrictions on rent, local authorities have helped ensure an acute
shortage in supply. Combined with the surge in demand brought about by
the national government’s deeply unpopular policy of inviting millions of Third World migrants into the country at
taxpayer expense, the housing and rental-property markets have been
radically distorted. And so, city officials have resorted to further
attacks on private property rights to deal with the problems government
helped create to begin with.  
Outside of Hamburg, municipalities have also been evicting tenants
from their apartments to house migrants. The first reported case in
Germany happened in September of 2015 in the town of Nieheim. It
involved Bettina Halbey, a 51-year-old nurse. “I was completely taken
aback,” she told Die Welt after receiving the eviction letter.
“I find it impossible to describe how the city has treated me.” On
social media, she described the move as “a kick in the teeth.” Later
that month, Gabrielle Keller, in the German town of Eschbach, was
ordered by authorities to vacate her government-owned apartment, again
to make room for migrants. “The alternative would have been to set up
beds in the gym,” argued the mayor.
An even more draconian scheme to trample private property rights to
house migrants was also floated in the German capital of Berlin. Under
that proposal, police would have been authorized to invade private
property without a warrant to determine whether the residence would be
suitable for migrant housing, according to media reports. However, even
amid the escalating “refugee” crisis brought on by “former” East German Communist Party propagandist Angela Merkel
and her “open door” policy, that was considered an unconstitutional
bridge too far. More than a few critics suggested Hamburg’s attacks on
property rights may also be unconstitutional, but no official
determination has yet been made.    
Still, critics expressed outrage. “Hamburg’s situation clearly
illustrates the downside to uncontrolled mass migration,” argued Matt
O’Brien with the Washington, D.C.-based Federation for American
Immigration Reform, which opposes mass migration. “Western civilization
operates on the notion that the first duty of a government is to protect
the life, liberty and property of its own citizens. All other
obligations are subsidiary. Hamburg decided to protect foreigners at the
expense of German citizens and, in so doing, failed to fulfill the
first duty of government. Let’s hope that if the U.S. government ever
begins expropriating private land in response to a migrant crisis, it’s
to build a border wall, not to house massive numbers of immigrants that
the people of the United States never wanted here.”
Local political figures in Hamburg have also spoken out, comparing
the attacks on private property to tyranny and shameful communist
horrors in Germany’s past. “The proposed confiscation of private land
and buildings is a massive attack on the property rights of the citizens
of Hamburg,” André Trepoll with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
party was quoted as saying in media reports, saying the “law of
intimidation” was a “political dam-break with far-reaching
implications.” “It amounts to an expropriation by the state…. The ends
do not justify any and all means.” The leader of the Free Democrats
Party in Hamburg, meanwhile, called it an “unacceptable crossing of red
lines” and noted that, ironically, such “coercive measures” would “only
fuel resentment against refugees.”
Germany is hardly the only formerly sovereign European nation in
which citizens and their fundamental rights — including their
private-property rights — are being trampled by authorities to
accommodate the avalanche of Third World migrants. In Italy, for
example, an elderly hotel operator was terrorized by armed agents of the
state for refusing to have his property packed full of migrants. A horrifying video of the episode went viral across the Internet.
When Luigi Fogli, 80 at the time, refused to house “refugees” for 7
euros in tax money for each — all of them apparently African men without
families present, video shows — authorities simply forced him to do it,
literally.

Late last year, the Italian Interior Ministry even floated a scheme,
dubbed the “Viminale Plan,” that would have put resistors behind bars
for refusing to allow their properties to be commandeered for housing
migrants. Under the plan, widely reported in Italian media,
thousands of armed enforcement agents from the police and the military
would be deployed to oversee enforcement. The Justice Ministry was
reportedly prepared to provide trials and detention to those who
resisted the plan. And almost incredibly, the commandeering of private
property was set to take place without compensation, as the government
does not have the funds to pay.
As The New American has documented extensively in a series
of articles, private property rights are not the only fundamental human
rights being targeted in Europe under the guise of dealing with the
so-called refugee crisis. Indeed, across Europe and the rest of the
Western world, the
globalist-engineered migrant crisis is leading to attacks on a wide
array of fundamental liberties including self-government, privacy, free
speech, freedom of the press, and more. In Germany, authorities have been raiding apartments and arresting those who criticize foreigners, Islam, or the mass-migration agenda too vociferously.
The Islamist terror attacks that have resulted from the crisis and
will continue to worsen, meanwhile, are being cited by regional
authorities at the European Union and national powers as a pretext to
justify the ongoing expansion of the police state at the national,
regional, and international level. More than a few political leaders
have suggested the establishment’s
agenda behind the migrant tsunami is the destruction of national
cohesion, Christianity, and the nation-state on the road to regional and
global governance. And senior establishment bigwigs such as former Goldman Sachs boss and UN migration czar Peter Sutherland have all but confirmed it. Indeed, the United Nations is funding TV ads urging German women to wear Muslim head scarves.
The attacks on private property rights must be resisted by all
clear-thinking people. America’s Founding Fathers warned about just how
serious infringements on private property were. John Adams, America’s
first vice president and second president, was perhaps the most firm and
eloquent. “The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property
is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of
law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence,”
Adams warned.
“If ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ were not
commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every
society, before it can be civilized or made free.”
Across the Western world, including in the United States, that idea
was admitted long ago. And under the guise of housing migrants, the idea
is rapidly being expanded all over the West.
Amid the globalist-orchestrated refugee crisis, in which globalist
Western governments destroyed Middle Eastern and African nations before
inviting the victims to Europe and the United States at taxpayer
expense, the very foundations of Western civilization and
Christendom are being eroded. And that was probably the agenda all
along. Instead of bombing foreign countries to rubble and then welcoming
the Third World into the West, real solutions to the problems must
begin by holding accountable the establishment figures behind the
tragedies.
Trampling the fundamental rights of Germans, Americans, and Italians
is probably the worst possible way of dealing with the crisis. Instead
of attacking innocent citizens, everyone in Brussels and Washington, D.C., who engineered the illegal wars on Libya and other nations based
on illegitimate United Nations resolutions should face legal
accountability — up to and including criminal prosecution if crimes were
committed, as it seems they were. Property owners in the West and
around the world should be left in peace.

Related articles:
Refugee Crisis: Using Chaos to Build Power
Refugee Crisis Has Europe on the Brink
Swedes and Germans Told to Integrate Into Their “New Country”
Swedish Police: Government Covering Up Huge Migrant Crime Spree
Globalists Who Created Refugee Crisis Now Exploiting It
UN “Together” Propaganda Bid Seeks to Flood West With Migrants
German Newspaper: Officials Are Covering Up Crimes by Migrants
Hungarian PM: Mass Migration a Plot to Destroy Christian West
Americans, Europeans Agree: Trump Is Right on Immigration
Obama-UN Refugee Summit: Huge Push for More Refugees
Insider: EU-U.S. Must Take More Refugees, Get Rid of Sovereignty
U.S. Intel: Obama Coalition Supported Islamic State in Syria
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